Abstract
Gobetti’s career as a public intellectual spanned an improbably short seven years: from late 1918, when he began editing his own cultural review, until his premature death in early 1926. Yet, in that short space of time, which overlapped with his university education, he worked tirelessly as a political commentator and cultural critic, organizing numerous campaigns and associating with a variety of political and philosophical currents. As one commentator has put it, Gobetti was the “boy-wonder of Turin” in the tumultuous years following the end of the First World War.1 With a sharp mind and an engaging personality, he was soon attracting other young intellectuals like himself in search of a project of cultural and political renewal.
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Notes
See the editor’s introductory comments in Stanlislao Pugliese, ed., Italian Fascism and Anti-Fascism: A Critical Anthology (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2001), 61–62.
See Marco Gervasoni, L’intelletuale come eroe. Piero Gobetti e le culture del Novecento (Milan: La Nuova Italia, 2000), 19–25.
See Lucy Riall, The Italian Risorgimento. State, Society and National Unification (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 14–15.
Gobetti, “Le università e la cultura. Torino,” Conscientia (January 23, 1926),
Scritti politici, ed. Paolo Spriano (Turin: Einaudi, 1960), 909. From hereon, this collection of Gobetti’s writings will be abbreviated SP.
On the civic role of Turin’s university, as well as Gobetti’s relation with it, see Angelo d’Orsi, La cultura a Torino tra le due guerre (Turin: Einaudi, 2000), 4–6.
See Norberto Bobbio, Italia fedele. Il mondo di Gobetti (Florence: Passigli, 1986), 205–16.
Paolo Bagnoli, Piero Gobetti: cultura e politica in un liberale del Novecento (Florence: Passigli, 1984), 16. For a survey of Turin’s intellectuals, see Norberto Bobbio, Trent’anni di storia della cultura a Torino (1920–1950) (Turin: Einaudi, 2002).
Martin Clark, Modern Italy, 1871–1995, 2nd ed. (London and NewYork: Longman, 1996), 192.
Antonio Gramsci, “La settimana politica [XVI]. La funzione storica delle città,” L’Ordine Nuovo (January 17, 1920), in L’Ordine Nuovo 1919–1920, ed. Valentino Gerratana and Antonio A. Santucci (Turin: Einaudi, 1987), 387.
Clark, Modern Italy, 193.
Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century1914–1991 (London: Michael Joseph, 1994), 26.
On combattentismo, see Emilio Gentile, The Origins of Fascist Ideology, 1918–1925 (New York: Enigma, 2005).
See Gobetti, “Rinnovamento,” Energie Nove (November 1–15, 1918), SP, 5. See also “Volontà,” Energie Nove (November 1–15, 1918), SP, 15–16.
Gobetti, Carteggio 1918–1922, ed. Ersilia A. Perona (Turin: Einaudi, 2003), 3. See also his letter of February 2, 1919, to the editors of the Torinese student magazine, L’Azione Studentesca: Gobetti, Carteggio, 30–31.
Gobetti, “Rinnovamento,” 5.
Gobetti, “Propaganda italiana all’estero,” Energie Nove (November 15–30, 1918), SP, 23. Gobetti’s metaphors of “youth” and “heroism” are examined in chap. 5 of Gervasoni, L’intelletuale come eroe.
Gobetti, “Commenti e giustificazioni,” Energie Nove (December 15–31, 1918), SP, 30.
Ibid., 32.
Ibid.
Gobetti, Carteggio, 5.
Ibid.,
See also Gobetti’s various public defenses of Croce: “B. Croce e i pagliacci della cultura,” Energie Nove (November 15–30, 1918), SP, 17–21; and “Croce oppositore,” La Rivoluzione Liberale (September 6, 1925), SP, 876–81. Gobetti was keen to distinguish Croce from his many admirers: “I hate the Croceans: they are empty, inert windbags like the anti-croceans. I despise them just as much as I admire Croce,” in “Nota III [I crociani],” Energie Nove (January 1–15, 1919), SP, 46.
On Gobetti’s relationship with Prezzolini and La Voce, see Emilio Gentile, “Gobetti e La Voce,” L’Osservatore politico letterario (1971), 14–20; Giuseppe Prezzolini, ed., Gobetti e “La Voce” (Florence: Sansoni, 1971).
Gobetti, “La Nostra Fede,” Energie Nove (May 5, 1919), SP, 77.
Ibid., 78.
Ibid., 86–87.
See Bobbio, Trent’anni, 40–43.
Ibid., 87.
See Antonio Gramsci, La città futura 1917–1918, ed. Sergio Caprioglio (Turin: Einaudi, 1982), 3–35.
See Gramsci, “Indifferenti,” La città futura (February 11, 1917), in La città futura 1917–18, 13–15; and “La disciplina,” La città futura (February 11, 1917), in La città futura, 19–20.
Gobetti, “La Società delle Nazioni,” Energie Nove (January 1–15, 1919), SP, 36–41.
Paolo Spriano, Gramsci e Gobetti, 3rd ed. (Turin: Einaudi, 1977), 103.
See Gobetti’s letter to Ada Prospero of April 19, 1919, in Piero Gobetti and Ada Gobetti, Nella tua breve esistenza. Lettere 1918–1926, ed. Erslia A. Perona (Turin: Einadui, 1991), 35.
Christopher Seton-Watson, Italy from Liberalism to Fascism, 1870–1925 (London and New York: Methuen, 1967), 511.
Clark, Modern Italy, 203–4.
On the history of postwar Italian nationalism, see Giuseppe Bedeschi, La fabbrica delle ideologie: Il pensiero politico nell’Italia del Novecento (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2002), 44–62 and
Adrian Lyttelton, The Seizure of Power. Fascism in Italy, 1919–1929 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), 15–30.
On early fascism, see Philip Morgan, Italian Fascism, 1919–1945 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), 13–16. I will discuss the roots of fascism in more detail in Chapter 5.
Ibid., 512.
Ibid., 519–27.
See Antonio Gramsci, “Salveminiana,” L’Ordine Nuovo (June 28–July 5, 1919), in L’Ordine nuovo, 1919–1920, ed. Valentino Gerratana and Antonio A. Santucci (Turin: Einaudi, 1987), 112, 113. Although the article is contained in this collection of Gramsci’s work, the editors indicate that the original was not signed and it is very likely, in fact, to have been penned by one of the paper’s other editors, Angelo Tasca. See also Gramsci, “Maturità,” L’Ordine Nuovo (June 7, 1919), in L’Ordine Nuovo, 64–65.
See Giovanni Gentile, Opere filosofiche (Milan: Garzanti, 1991), 453–681. For a useful, and critical, overview of Gentile’s ideas, see chap. 6 of
Richard Bellamy, Modern Italian Social Theory. Ideology and Politics from Pareto to the Present (Cambridge: Polity, 1987). A full discussion of Gentile’s philosophy can be found in
H. S. Harris, The Social Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile (Urbana and London: University of Illinois Press, 1960), and a neat, if wholly uncritical, defense can be found in
A. J. Gregor, Giovanni Gentile: Philosopher of Fascism (New Brunswick and London: Transaction, 2001). Biographical information and a useful account of his relationships with other thinkers is available in
Gabriele Turi, Giovanni Gentile: una biografia, 2nd ed. (Turin: UTET Libreria, 2006).
On the difference between Croce and Gentile’s philosophies, see Harris, Social Philosophy, 19–22; David D. Roberts, Benedetto Croce and the Uses of Historicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 105–16.
Gentile, “Le due democrazie,” “Liberalismo e liberali” and “L’idea monarchica” in Dopo la vittoria: Nuovi frammenti politici (Rome: La Voce, 1920), 110–11, 172–73, and 154–55, respectively. See also his comments in “Il problema politico” of 1920, in
Gentile, Discorsi di religione (Florence: Sansoni, 1957), 25.
See Gentile, Guerra e fede. Frammenti politici (Naples: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1919) and Dopo la vittoria.
See, for example, Gentile, “L’educazione nazionale,” in Guerra e fede (Naples: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1919).
Gobetti’s support for Gentile’s pedagogic interventions is noted in “La questione della scuola,” Energie Nove (January 1–15, 1919), SP, 42–43, and also in a letter to Ada of August 1919, where he talks of “having already gotten close enough to Gentile’s position” on pedagogy, which he admired for its “poetic attraction” by which “all problems, in unifying themselves, acquire a new light.” Nella tua breve esistenza, 89. See also Gervasoni, L’intelletuale come eroe, 45–46.
Palmiro Togliatti, ‘“Guerra e fede’ di Giovanni Gentile,” L’Ordine Nuovo (May 1, 1919), in Opere, Vol. 1, 1917–1926, ed. Ernesto Ragionieri (Rome: Editori Riuniti), 20.
For the argument that both Gramsci and Gobetti were influenced by Gentile’s idealism, see Augusto Del Noce, Il suicidio della rivoluzione (Milan: Rusconi, 1978).
On the “myth of the new state,” and particularly its place in the emergence of fascism, see Emilio Gentile, Il mito dello stato nuovo dall’antigiolittismo al fascismo (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1982).
Togliatti, “Parassiti della cultura,” L’Ordine Nuovo (May 15, 1919), in Opere, Vol. 1, 27–29. Togliatti’s title—“Cultural Parasites”—is a parody of the title of Gobetti’s article—“B. Croce and the Clowns of Culture”—defending Croce. See Gobetti, “B. Croce e i pagliacci della cultura.”
See Gobetti, “Polemica con L’‘Ordine Nuovo’ (Nota),” Energie Nove (May 15, 1919), SP, 113–15. Gobetti also mentioned Togliatti’s attack in a letter to Caramella (see Gobetti, Carteggio, 54). Ordine Nuovo followed with a short defense of their critique of Gobetti and the “academic vanity” of the professors upon whom he drew support. The article was unsigned, but is attributed to Gramsci: see
Gramsci, “Contributi a una nuova dottrina dello stato e del colpo di stato,” L’Ordine Nuovo (June 7, 1919), in L’Ordine Nuovo, 72–73.
See Gobetti, “Frammenti di estetismo politico,” Energie Nove (November 30, 1919), SP, 164–78.
See Mario Missiroli, Polemica liberale (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1919).
Ibid., 173–74.
Guido De Ruggiero, “Polemica liberale,” Il Nuovo Giornale (November 20, 1919), in Scritti politici 1912–1926, ed. Renzo De Felice (Bologna: Cappelli, 1963), 306.
De Ruggiero, “Discussioni socialiste,” Il Resto del Carlino (July 17, 1919), in Scritti politici, 277. De Ruggiero’s analyses were developed in his study of European liberalism, published in 1925. See
De Ruggiero, The History of European Liberalism, trans. R. G. Collingwood (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959). For a comparison of De Ruggiero with Gobetti, see
David D. Roberts, “Frustrated Liberals: De Ruggiero, Gobetti, and the Challenge of Socialism,” Canadian Journal of History 17 (1982): 59–86. For a general overview of De Ruggiero’s political thought, see Bedeschi, La fabbrica delle ideologie, 230–46.
Togliatti, “Che cos’è il liberalismo?,” L’Ordine Nuovo (September 20–27, 1919), in Opere, Vol. 1, 63–69.
Ibid., 151.
Ibid., 170–71.
Carlo Levi, “Gli anni di Energie Nove,” Il contemporaneo 3, no. 7 (1956): 3.
On Gobetti’s influence on Levi, see David Ward, Carlo Levi. Gli italiani e la paura della libertà (Milan: La Nuova Italia, 2002).
Barbara Allason, “Ricordo di Piero Gobetti,” in Trent’anni di storia italiana (1915–1945), ed. Domenico Zucàro (Turin: Einaudi, 1961), 131–32.
See his letter to Caramella of February 13, 1920, Ibid., 95–96. Throughout 1920, Gobetti continued to suggest in correspondence that he intended to republish Energie Nove.
Gobetti, “I miei conti con l’idealismo attuale,” La Rivoluzione Liberale (January 18, 1923), SP, 445.
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© 2008 James Martin
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Martin, J. (2008). Idealism and Renewal. In: Piero Gobetti and the Politics of Liberal Revolution. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230616868_3
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